If anyone knows that the mood in Germany has not only turned against Russia since the start of the Ukraine war, it is VW CEO Herbert Diess.

Europe's horror that China's President Xi Jinping is criticizing the sanctions against Moscow, but he is not "greatly worried" about his "best friend" Vladimir Putin, who is threatening nuclear war," Diess said on Wednesday.

It is not yet foreseeable what the "political and economic" consequences of this should be if Brussels and Berlin should now also oppose Beijing.

Henrik Ankenbrand

Economic correspondent for China based in Shanghai.

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Johannes Pennekamp

Responsible editor for economic reporting, responsible for "The Lounge".

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That's the way it is.

After China's government refused to call the Russian invasion of Ukraine one for weeks and asserted that it wanted to continue doing good business with its "partner", the EU invited China to a virtual summit on April 1st.

According to Brussels, Europe is “on the threshold of World War III”.

If Beijing decides to "side with the aggressor", this could have "serious damage" to economic relations with the EU.

The consequences of China's support for Putin for companies like VW, which plans to invest 15 billion euros in the country with its Chinese partners in the production of electric cars alone, are already "huge".

In Europe, the voices were getting louder to also withdraw from China's economy after Russia.

But could Germany afford to say goodbye to the Chinese market, which is always said to be dependent on the German economy?

In fact, at first glance, the dependency is gigantic.

Last year, the People's Republic was Germany's most important trading partner for the sixth time in a row.

Goods worth around 245 billion euros were exchanged, another 15 percent more than in the previous year.

Above all, imports – mobile phones, game consoles, clothing – continue to skyrocket and have become an integral part of German life.

The economies of both countries are closely intertwined.

In contrast to Russia, which supplies Germany almost exclusively with oil and gas, industrial companies in particular work closely together.

Many products are replaceable

According to the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation, the digital pioneer China is the most important importing country for 9 out of 13 individual technologies.

But at the same time it is clear: "The vast majority of goods from China could be replaced by other goods." That says Lisandra Flach, the foreign trade expert at the Munich Ifo Institute.

Together with colleagues, she examined the supply chains of German companies to determine which relevant products the industry only purchases from individual countries and whether they could also get the products from other suppliers if the worst came to the worst.

The relatively reassuring result: only 5 percent of all German imports are such "dependent goods" - and of these, only 3 percent come from China, i.e. a fraction of all imports.

"It's mainly about chemical, pharmaceutical and metal products," says Flach.

As an example, she cites magnets for the operation of refrigerators, microwaves and computers or "heterocyclic compounds" that are required, among other things, for the sleeping pill diazepam.

The vast majority of imports from China could therefore be replaced.

"It's not always possible in the short term, but the German supply chain is highly diversified," says Flach.